skull. Those are the parietal bones, separated by the sagittal

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1 CHAPTER 12 THE AUTOPSY X-RAYS AND EVIDENCE OF FORGERY If you draw a line on your head from the top of one ear across the top of your head to the other ear, that is roughly where the coronal suture is, which is a juncture of the frontal bone or plate of the skull, comprising the forehead, and the two major bones posterior to that on the left and right side of the skull. Those are the parietal bones, separated by the sagittal suture. The sagittal suture runs front to back from the coronal suture to the occipital bone. In 1977 a panel of doctors, anthropologists, and a dentist met privately at the National Archives with two of the autopsy doctors, James Humes, and Thornton Boswell. There ensued the most major official discussion ever to occur among the witnesses up to then about the evidence. They had the alleged autopsy photographs and X-rays with them, and this discussion with regard to the skull X-rays nos. 1,3, and 6 followed. "Well, I think the question that we all have is whether this is anterior to the coronal suture, or posterior to it," Dr. Petty said. He was talking about whether the large hole in the President's head was forward of the right ear, or behind it. "Oh, there was damage that far forward?" Dr. Angel asked. He was an anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institution, unfortunately now deceased. Angel was aware of the evidence that the back of the President's head was missing. He had before him photographs which showed no damage to the face or the back of the head, but he had conflicting X-rays showing the right front of the face missing. "I believe so. I think the damage is quite apparent here in the lateral view of the skull by X-ray." Petty said. "Yes, that's right." Angel said, with a sort of bitter irony, as he could read the X-ray. Dr. Baden then confirmed for us that the frontal bone was indeed missing: "And also on X-ray No. 1, the anteriorposterior view, right side." "In that case, I'm puzzled by the missing bone here and the angles..." Angel said. After a"'-bit, he said "What's bothering me is what part of the flesh is that?" "That's the cheek, the right cheek." "If that's the right cheek then it can't be--has to be more or less." "Yeah." "It's really hard to be sure, square this with the X-ray which shows so much bone lost in this right frontal area." (7 HSCA 249) Humes makes it clear then that the X-rays were taken before 1

2 any "manipulations were performed." (7 HSCA 249) In a moment, Angel, still doing God's work, said, "So, in that case this exit wound is really in the frontal--its in front of that notch there--it's in the frontal, see what I mean, it would have to be about here." (7 HSCA 250) And a bit later, Dr. Petty says, "so that placing the outshoot wound in the right frontal bone toward the coronal suture is probably about where it was.." Humes: "Uh-huh." (p. 251) Out of boredom, Humes and Boswell went passively along with placing the large exit wound in the front of the head, but they were not totally dead. They protested vigorously on other points that the X-rays and photographs showed, and they claimed that three weeks beforehand, photos turned up which they were told about. "And we never had the privilege of examining the fragments or photographs of this fragment that you now examined until this afternoon, and I was unaware of its existence until about 3 weeks ago." (p. 248) How convenient. In 1966 these same autopsy doctors spent some hours in the National Archives cataloging and marking each and every photograph and X-ray, and now all of a sudden, like the palm print on the alleged Oswald murder rifle, a new photograph shows up eleven years later and three weeks before this meeting! Humes got very hot about the fact that the interior chest photographs were missing. Both he and Boswell got very hot about the attempts by everyone to move the entry wound four inches from where they had placed it at the autopsy. A proof of the forgery, of the enormous lies that are being perpetrated on us is the fact that in the above discussion there is a description of the large defect in the back of the head, the exit wound that everyone is trying to pretend is no longer there. Dr. Davis points it out to all: "We can see in X-ray film No. 2 extending in an upward direction from the region of the external occipital protuberance, with the upperlportion of this in an area where there's a large defect in the posterior parietal bone." The plane truth is, there could not have been an entry wound where they are trying to move it--into the cowlick of the head four inches above where it was observed at the autopsy--because there was no bone on that part of the back/top of the head. The very next sentence Dr. Davis utters is even more revealing: "Now, there is radiopaque material, some of which appears to be even exterior..." Remember that the X-ray tech from the autopsy was made to tape pieces of bullet fragments to pieces of bone the next day and X-ray them. (see chapter on Custer) The Clark Panel found in 1968 that there was a large part of a bullet embedded on the outer table of the skull. THE KRON -TV SHOW 2

3 In 1988, several witnesses at President Kennedy's autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital came forward and spoke publicly on KRON-TV, in San Francisco, to the central issue of the authenticity of the autopsy photographs and X-rays which is raised in this book. What they said was startling. Jerrol Custer, the man who took the X-rays at Bethesda, was shown copies of them by Sylvia Chase of KRON, who asked, "Is this the X-ray picture that you took and is this the wound that you saw on the President?" "No. This area here was gone. (demonstrating the back of the head) There was no scalp there. Not this area," he said emphatically, pointing out the very large missing area on the right in front of the ear in the alleged X-rays. "I don't believe this is the autopsy X-ray." He demonstrated from the front top of the head all the way back to the back of the neck: "This part of the head was gone." Custer very strongly disputed the photographs and X-rays, as did the others. Custer said, "from the top of the head to the base of the skull. That part was gone." The X-rays alleged to be of Kennedy are not his and are substituted. The man who took the X-rays at Bethesda, Jerrol Custer, told me exactly what he told Sylvia Chase on KRON-TV in San Francisco. He took a lot of time to observe the wounds: "There was a large hole in the back of the head, and there was a big hole in the scalp there." I asked Custer, "in other words, that photo of the back of the head--which is in some dispute-- would have shown that, if the scalp was shredded and macerated as you describe, it would have shown that in the photographs?" "Absolutely!" "But what you saw was an actual hole in the scalp itself in the very back of the head, in the occipital area where the large defect was?" "Right." I asked him if he had seen the Walter Cronkite show on the assassination. "That was very superficial." "Bu was a flap of scalp there that could have been pulled up to ever the hole in the very back of the head?" Custer replied, "There was a king size hole in the back of the head, and that area was torn." From their observations at the autopsy at the time, Custer and the other Navy enlisted men all thought that the President had been shot from in front, and that the large hole in the back of the head was an exit. They themselves were quite stunned when they heard the results of the Warren Commission findings and what the autopsy report said--not entirely in line with each other, either. "Do you feel that the X-rays--you're absolutely sure in your own mind that they don't show what you saw that night?" "Lets put it this way--in the lateral skull films it looks like part of the front of his face is gone. But if you look at the autopsy photographs, there's nothing gone there. His eye 3

4 should have been completely gone on that film, which it never should." THE AUTHENTICATOR The House Select Committee on Assassinations made a stab at authenticating the skull X-rays. It all boiled down to 2 teeth and a sinus cavity. Nobody inquired whether or not those parts of the skull the forensic dentists compared to dental X-rays supposed to be that of JFK were parts of composite X-rays made just for this purpose. On July 18, 1991, I attempted to talk to Dr. Lowell Levine, the forensic dentist who worked on the famous Josef Mengele case, and who was used by the House Assassinations Committee. I say attempted, because for me it was a very tough interview. I never got close to the technical questions because Levine--who works for the New York State Police--was too defensive, too much on the attack, too much in control, and not open to any real discussion. Dr. Levine's report on his authentication of the skull X-rays 1,2, and 3 are in Volume Seven of the HSCA, page 53. (see also public testimony, Sept 7, 1978, 1 HSCA p. 149) He told me that he saw the original X-rays. I asked him, or tried to, "the original...the whole entire..." "The whole...the whole original X-rays, there, there's absolutely nothing wrong with them." "For the entire head, you mean?" "Yeah...They could not publish them intact. They were not allowed. they're owned by the family. WHO'RE YOU WITH?" "I'm a freelance." "The X-rays--there's absolutely nothing peculiar about 'em. We examined the original X-rays." I tried to explain to Levine that the X-rays of the skull showed the whole right front of the face missing. I asked him how come there was so much bone missing, if they either cropped them or blacked them out somehow. "They had to (be cropped," he explained, which of course had nothing to do with why the bone was missing. But cropping them was one more example of tainting the evidence, putting a fog over the public's ability to adequately perceive the evidence. They didn't want the public to know what really happened. The X-rays were faked to show a blow out in that part of the head. Cropping them made my job that much more difficult. "Is there a reason why?" "Yeah...because they were not allowed by the owners of the X-rays to publish the entire picture...there's absolutely zippo...nothing wrong with the films." Later: "I can tell you absolutely, positively, totally 110 percent the X-rays were of Kennedy...Okay...they totally comported with everything that ah, with the findings of the panel." He sidestepped saying that they compared with the dental 4

5 X-rays or whatever else he had. He said that he did not think it peculiar that they found three envelopes of dental X-rays in the White House rather than in a dentist's office. "Prominent people want it that way," he said. "I have no problem with that. I don't remember a whole lot but there was nothing unusual about 'em." He told me that he was present during the interview with Humes and Boswell, the two autopsy pathologists, when they were interviewed by the panel of doctors for the House Committee. Not long after this interview with Levine, I talked to Dr. Earl Rose who was there also, and who had been the medical examiner of Dallas the day he tried to stop them from taking the body out of Texas. I tried to reason with Levine: "Well, then, you are aware that they (Humes and Boswell) were insisting that the entry wound in the back of the head was nowhere near where it was in that X-ray and the panel commented on the persistent disparity between its findings and those of the autopsy pathologists who said that the entrance wound was at or near the occipital protuberance and it was found to be 4 inches higher than that on the X-rays...Don't you think it was rather peculiar when the autopsy doctors were rather desperately trying to say..." he cut me off: "But they were not forensic pathologists...they did not, ahhh." There it is again. They made a mistake. They did make mistakes, but they could not be wrong about everything. They certainly would have seen and noted a bullet hole in the skull where it now is, rather than four inches from there. Especially since there was no bone in that part of the head. After all, they had a competent radiologist at the autopsy who was interpreting the films, and they had the head of the deceased in their hands. They would see and find the bullet hole, which they did, but not anywhere near where it now is. "And another thing, Dr. Pierre Finck who was at the autopsy and who collaborated on all the reports with Huges and Boswell, (so we are told) was a forensic pathologist. He apparently came to the above meeting all the way from his home in Geneva, and then shortly walked out, bored. "Mr. Livingstone, look, let me, if I may, 'cause I'm not going to get in an argument with you. I'll give you my discernment, then I'm gonna go." "Sure." "Ok. It's not unusual, Okay? I see it where non forensic pathologists or hospital pathologists...very different you know...do this not infrequently in cases that we deal with everyday. Okay, in other words, one of my jobs...we're reviewers of things that are produced by non-forensic people and it is not an unusual occurrence at all. The thing is...at 14 or 15 years ago, you know, no matter what is done, you know you're a theorist, I mean I can tell you you're wasting your time--or I 5

6 think so. The medical evidence was very obvious. It was very simple and its the type of stuff we look at all the time." "Let me ask you in the frontal part of the skull X-ray that you saw...did you see that the bone was missing, or was it present?" "I don't recall." This was the beginning of a major memory problem with him. He couldn't recall from then on, and he didn't hang up. "On the right side." "I don't recall right now, you know, and I'd have to go back and look at the report, but it was...what I can tell you is my recollection is...and write it down...that the X-rays totally comported with the findings of the pathology panel." Which, said findings, of course, were almost totally dependent on his X- rays. Catch No. 22. I mentioned that a radiologist told me that there appeared to be surgery to the edges of the frontal bone in the temple, and that bone was missing there, not to speak of to the rest of the right front face. Mark Crouch noted the same thing in a different area--on the forehead, and he had been told by a doctor that it looked like nippers had been used there. These are the type of clippers that clip through skull bone. "There was absolutely no surgery to the skull." Of course this dentist was not a forensic pathologist, so he couldn't know what he was saying. We then got into a new form of Catch 22. This dealt with whether or not my radiologist friends had seen the original X- rays. His position was that if we didn't look at the original material we couldn't know what we were talking about. "You have to look at the original material," he said. "You know that we can't." "Just file a Freedom of Information Act suit," he said. Then he started dropping names. His credentials were being on the Mengele case in This highly dubipus information presented in an ad hominem argument, about the former Nazi death camp doctor who helped kill so many helpless people was supposed to give him the authority his discussion with me lacked. I told him that "the presumption is that this material is a forgery." "Mr. Livingstone--" "Yeah?" "I'm not going to get in an argument with you." "No, I don't want to...i'm just trying to tell you the opposing viewpoint..." "Well, let me tell you, I've been involved with subsequently other things with Mengele and things like that...what I'm telling you--its all interesting--but you're barking up the wrong tree." No, but I am a dog with a bone. Don't press a button in my brain by throwing in Hitler for weight and authority. I'm not scared. 6

7 "Ah, huh," I said instead. "You know, feel free to do whatever you want, but--" "Do you have a basis for saying that?" "Sure, I looked at the original evidence and you haven't." "Well, if that evidence..." "I've got no other comment. The evidence that I looked at the X-rays films, were absolutely, positively normal X-rays films that are taken everyday and not tampered with. If your chief radiologist friend can figure out a way that--after he looks at the original films, if he does..." "Did you see the photographs of the face--the President's face?" "Yes." "And did his face look normal to you?" "You know, I don't recall, but all I tell you--" "But you'd remember if there was damage to his face?" I...once again...i don't recall off the top of my head. Believe it or not...you know this may sound unusually--we're talking about 14 years ago, and I've probably seen thousands of cases." Man, if he can't remember what the face of the President of the United States looked like in the autopsy photographs, he should be retired. "All right, let's put it this way, do you have any reason to believe his face was damaged?" "I don't recall off the top of my head, you know, and I'd have to go back and..." "Is there any medical testimony that his face was damaged?" I asked him. "I do not recall, once again. As I said, you can do whatever you want but do not quote me--you know, inaccuratly." "Yes, but what I am trying to find out is if what you saw is similar to what they printed showing that the right front of the face is missing. That is the question here because, as you must know, there is no evidence what-so-ever from anybody, in fact to the contrary, everyone said his face wasiperfect, it was undamaged and in the photographs it is undamaged." "You're telling me that the right front of his face was missing?" "The skull that you verified as authentic has no right front of the face. The eye is missing, the right forehead, the right temple." "Once again, the skull that I verified is authentic. You know by comparing it with the dental X-rays." "What you verified was the jaw." I told him. "What you need to do is to look at the original X-ray films. Okay? In other words, the original X-rays films are correct. If your friend is trying to interpret things from photographic material..." "Well, we are unable to get at that material, as you know." "I don't know!" (He doesn't want to!) 7

8 "Yeah." "I mean, you're telling me things that I know, that I don't know." "No legitimate researchers in this case have been able to obtain this material." "I resent that! 'Cause I'm legitimate. You're implying that I'm, ah, am..." I apologized and explained that I was talking about independent outside observers. That didn't work, either. "Let me tell you what--everybody there were independent outside observers...okay...'cause you know you were paid an honorarium doesn't make you a shill for the government. You know, I resent that implication. We weren't bought and paid for." "You weren't paid for what you did?" "Well, we were paid...but I mean we weren't bought and paid for." Soon, he was back at it: "If you haven't learned, you know, that you've got to look at the original evidence." "It's not subject to the F.O.I.A., you should know that. Its a contract with the Kennedy family and the National Archives and no F.O.I.A. suit applies." These people get you running around in circles. He has already stated that there was an agreement with the Kennedy family that precluded showing the X-rays. He told us that he and the Committee were not allowed to show the full skull X-rays. But he is going to beat me over the head with a lie, telling me that I would be able to get access if I only but file a Freedom of Information Act request. The interview was within moments of its termination, and yet twice more he tried to send me to the original evidence. "I'm trying to help you by telling you that unless you see that- -unless you see the original material." And "I've gotta go, but you take a look at the original evidence..." Then WHY did the House Committee publish plior and perhaps incomplete photographs of the X-rays at all? What do they prove other than to create a new storm of controversy by showing the right front face missing? Although I must say nobody noticed it but me. This says that there is something seriously wrong with the press and some other institutions in this country. It says that a lot of us are trained either not to ask questions or ask the wrong ones. It also would seem to tell us that somebody on the Committee made sure that enough information did slip through the cracks to both stimulate and allow the real investigation that myself and some others are conducting to go forward. 8

9 CHAPTER THE ZAPRUDER FI The Zapruder film has long been the assassination. Every sort of cla Stamm and Thompson first pointed out head snap to the rear when the Presi bullet to the head, and this, they sa' physics--shows that the President we somewhere in front of him, rather tha The film give us a time frame frames per second pass through the lens. rrom calculate the time between some of the shots. The FBI had tested the bolt action rifle attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald and knew that it required about two and a half seconds to eject a spent shell, reload, aim, and fire. The FBI experts thought that it could be done in the amount of time between apparent hits on the film, but just barely. That analysis depended upon the real elapsed time between shots seen on the film, which was dependent on a subjective interpretation of whether John Connally was hit with a separate shot. If he was, as the film appears to show, then the single assassin theory is out the window. The film seems to show that Connally was hit sometime after Kennedy is hit, as Connally has always maintained. We don't need the film to prove John Connally was hit with a separate bullet. Commander James J. Humes, President Kennedy's chief autopsy pathologist, put it this way to the Warren Commission, when Arlen Specter, the chief cover-up lawyer, asked him, "And could that missile (CE 399--the bullet that was found on the stretcher and alleged to have transited President Kennedy's back and come out of his throat) have made the wound on Governor Connally's right wrist?" "I think that that is most unlikely. May I expand on those two answers?" Dr. Humes asked. "Yes, please do," the future Senator offered most graciously. "...Also going to Exhibit 392, the report from Parkland Hospital, the following sentence referring to the examination of the wound of the wrist is found: 'Small bits of metal were encountered at various levels throughout the wound, and these were, wherever they were identified and could be picked up, picked up and submitted to the pathology department for identification and examination.' The reason I believe it most unlikely that this missile could have inflicted either of these wounds is that this missile is basically intact; its jacket 1

10 sound--as though you were standing against something metal and firing into it, and you hear both the sound of a gun going off and the sound of the cartridge hitting the metal place, which could have been caused probably by the hard surface of the head. But I am not sure that is what caused it. (2 WCH 144, testimony of Clinton Hill) And, when Arlen Specter questioned Roy Kellerman, he asked, "Now in your prior testimony you described a flurry of shells into the car. How many shots did you hear after the first noise which you described as sounding like a firecracker?" "Mr. Specter, these shells came in all together." "Are you able to say how many you heard?" "I am going to say two, and it was like a double bang-- bang, bang." (2 WCH 76) Some descriptions were that a "fusillade" was fired. Of course, there is quiet ammunition, and that which makes a lot of noise. I believe there were decoy gunmen at the ambush, and those who were being covered by the others, who could get away more easily. Penn Jones, Jr., having had much combat experience at Anzio and elsewhere, believes that it was an exploding bullet. There is certainly evidence for that in terms of the sort of shrapnel that was found in the car and in the skull. It did not appear to be or perhaps could not have been the military jacketed bullet that was supposed to have been used, which is designed to pass on through bone without coming apart. But Kurtz, who's academic work on the case is little known, then makes an interesting proposal. He says that there is an indication that "The gunman on the sixth-floor southeast corner window of the Depository also focused on the President's head. Now, at Zapruder frame 327, he fired the final shot in the carefully planned crossfire. Discharged less than a second after the Knoll shot hit the President, this shot entered the rear of the skull near the top of the head, and it exploded out of the huge hole in the front caused by the shot from KToll." (p.222) AUTHENTICITY I question the authenticity of the Zapruder film. Let us examine for a moment how Time, Inc. got the Zapruder film. Zapruder's lawyer was Sam Passman, with whom he was related, a partner in Passman, Jones in Dallas. Zapruder took the film to Passman--the man who actually arranged the sale to Life Magazine for $150,000 (Zapruder told the Warren Commission he was paid $25,000, which was true, but omitted to mention the remaining five payments for the same amount of money, which were yet to come.) Nobody ever criticised him for doing things the good old American way. Passman's partner, Shannon Jones, just happened to have done a lot of work for the CIA in Texas, and had been in the OSS 4

11 in World War II. Jones leased hangers for the CIA in Brownsville for the CIA in the Guatemalan operation, and painted and armed planes. Jones was also the lawyer for Joe Civello, the top mafia chiefton in Dallas, who was arrested at the famous Appalachian conference of Syndicate leaders, and who reported to Carlos Marcello in New Orleans. Zapruder's son was a long time FBI agent. (Author's conversations with James Niell, attorney for Officer Roy Vaughn.) While we are talking about this, it is worth pointing out how many times we find the Mob working "hand in glove," as Congressman Henry Gonzalez told me in 1976, with government agencies. David Ferrie flew planes and performed many other tasks for Carlos Marcelo, and was a contract agent of the CIA. Let's use Common Sense when we analyze the facts and the evidence, and not fall into the pits dug for us by official bodies. If the film shows a huge wound to the right side of the face, as it does, then all of the witnesses who saw the dying and dead President and all of the autopsy photographs are wrong. Common Sense tells us that they all can't be wrong. Common Sense tells us that for each thing the eye witnesses are supposed to be wrong about, we would be back to a flat earth and not a round one. Common Sense, therefore, tells us that the film is wrong. That it is fake. but almost nobody ever dared question it, and the persons most closely connected to it deny this possibility, and we are used to accepting the word of the experts--even if self proclaimed--without question. Professor Paul Hoch of the University of California at Berkeley obtained with the aid of a Freedom of Information Act suit, some papers indicating that NPIC, the National Photographic Identification Center, a CIA department, made a study of the Zapruder film. The Secret Service brought the film to them. The question is, when? The papers are` not dated. Why not? There are receipts among the papers indicating that three prints and perhaps an original film was processed and printed by NPIC, which would almost certainly--if the indication of an original is correct--mean that they had the film the night of the assassination, and the business of developing and copying the film in Dallas is hoaxed up. As Prof. Philip Melanson suggests in his article, "Hidden Exposure: Cover-up and Intrigue in the CIA's Secret Possession of the Zapruder Film," (The Third Decade, November 22, 1984) the film could have been tampered with then. He says that the technology existed then to resize images, remove frames, and create special effects. THE BLOB 5

12 I have long wondered about a large apparent effusion of brain matter or flesh which spills from the right side of the face and temple region just after the President receives a shot to the head. We do not see this so much in the Groden version of the film, but we do see it in a rather extraordinary fashion in the much clearer Thompson version, which was made for the House Assassinations Committee. The material spewing forth from the head appears to stick out several inches and be about half a foot wide. It is spread all across the face. One would assume that it is an exploded face or brain, and it cannot all be an optical illusion from reflections of sunlight off Jackie's hat and from the small flap of bone which evidently opens up at that point, as Groden says. In fact, close study of the succeeding frames in which we see this blob--until the head disappears from view to the left, in Jackie's lap--indicates that the Blob covers exactly that part of the face shown to be missing in the autopsy skull X-rays. We see that flap of bone with scalp attached on the right side of the head in some of the autopsy photographs but not in others. Trouble with the flap is, it changes orientation in relation to the rest of the head as the camera moves in small measure around the head. And it does not exist at all in the autopsy photograph of the right side of the head. There is a bat wing shaped structure on the head in the general area, but much too large to be the flap, and in the wrong place. Groden claims that Mrs. Kennedy closed up the alleged flap on the way to the hospital, where it was not seen. But the men from the autopsy say the flap we see in the picture is not in the right place, either, or did not exist at all. No entry wound was noted in Dallas in the right temple or face area, and in fact, no defect in the bone or skull was seen there by any witness. "You saw the President'slace, though, at a later time as you have described?" Arlen Spector asked Roy Kellerman, the Secret Service agent who was sitting in the right front seat of the President's limousine when he was killed. "Yes, thank you... While he lay on the stretcher in that emergency room his collar and everything is up and I saw nothing in his face to indicate an injury, whether the shot had come through or not. He was clear." (2 WCH p. 82) There are many other statements that there was no damage at all to any part of the President's face, and none to the contrary. Since the doctors and nurses all carefully noted a very small wound in the throat, at the most five millimeters across, and perhaps only two or three millimeters, it would not seem rational that the wound we see in the film existed. I feel sure that someone in Dallas wound have noted such a wound, which seems gigantic in the Zapruder film. 6

13 Corresponding to the gigantic wound in the right front of the face and forehead-temple area is a total loss of bone in the X-ray alleged to be of President Kennedy's head. We know that this would be impossible without the face being blown away, if it represents a shot from behind. If the bone had fallen in during transport to Bethesda, it would show somewhere in the X- rays. It does not. If it had fallen in, the face would have fallen in with the body on its back, and there is no sign of the bone somewhere in the skull. The face shows no sign of being unsupported by bone, and in fact looks perfectly undamaged. No doctor I have spoken to said that a face would remain as though normal if the underlying bone was gone. The missing bone in the skull X-rays has to represent a blow out of the face, which did not in fact happen. The photographs of the head show that parietal bone on both sides of the top of the head as far as the coronal suture is missing. We would have seen the Blob coming out of there if the film was on the up and up, and not on the face as we now see it in the film. Dr. John Lattimer says that the Blob is a "flap", but this is about as inaccurate a description as his claiming to have visualized the adrenals in the X-rays. It is my opinion, therefore, that the Zapruder film has some animated special effects: The large effusion we see sticking out from the head is painted in for those few frames before the head falls into Jackie's lap. The purpose of this special effect is to encourage the idea in Earl Warren's head that the President was shot from behind. The brain did not show any loss of material from the frontal cerebral lobes, and in fact could not, according to the supplemental autopsy report, have lost any material at all, having the weight of a normal brain. The alternative is that President Kennedy had an abnormally large brain, which some of us would prefer to believe. We see the strange blob for more than twenty five frames, far too long for it to be any sort of artifactlin the film. In addition, for optical reasons, it cannot be an artifact, because it is quite clear and distinctive for those twenty five frames. What is not clear and distinctive is the President's head, which seems to disintegrate and disappear by the time the head is drawn into Jackie's lap. In one frame, there is no face or head at all to the right of the line straight up from the President's ear, and I see Jackie clearly to the right of and beyond the ears where the rest of the head should be. One might get the idea from this that Kennedy's head was indeed blown off and nothing but a "stump." But that raises too many questions. Far too many witnesses have insisted that there was no damage at all to the President's face, and there certainly is none in the autopsy photographs. As Dr. Paul Peters told me in 1979, "His face and the front of his head was perfect." 7

14 It is not reasonable that Mrs. Kennedy somehow stuffed back into the head what appears to be the whole right front part of the brain. The flap as seen in the photographs is far too small for such a huge blob to exit from, and it is in the wrong place. There were no known fracture lines in the skull area that would have allowed so much tissue to exit and stick out from the head. Although strange things happen in such shocking events, I doubt that anyone would do such a thing. Since the X-ray shows the front of the face and forehead missing, the plotters quite clearly fabricated evidence that would cover up a shot from in front to the head. In addition, I notice a sort of jerk in the film at the moment of the head shot, which would indicate a possible frame missing. Shortly before this, six frames have been removed from the film in two places. The first splice is at Z-157. Kennedy appears to be reacting to something. Next, a few frames later, we see a tree trunk split and the crucial frames around Z-210 and Z-212 seem to be missing. Additional tampering with what this film says was evidenced by the fact that the crucial frames at the instant the President was hit in the head were reversed by both the Warren Commission in their publication of the film frame by frame, and by the Life magazine presentation. Those frames in their proper sequence show the President's head rocketed backwards by the force of a rifle shot from in front. Had that backward movement not been on the film, I don't think we would have ever heard about the jet effect, a supposed physical reaction to a force that would cause an object to move in the direction from which the force came. This violates Newton's Second Law of Physics, as I understand it. NPIC Paul Hoch, a long time researcher and authclr in this case, also publisher of an important newsletter called Echos of Conspiracy in 1976 obtained certain important documents with regard to the Zapruder film with a Freedom of Information Act request. One of the group of documents released to him (# 450) indicated that at some point in time the CIA had access to the film at their National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) Unfortunately, there is no date, so this information can possibly mean nothing, but the fact that there is no date in itself tells us a lot. One of the documents apparently refers to the original film and indicates that four prints were made from it. One of these is a "test print." Prof. Philip Melanson writes that "In any criminal case, the integrity of evidence depends upon its chain of possession: 8

15 who had it when, how and for what purposes before it came into the possession of official investigators to be analyzed by them...(the documents) provide considerable support for allegations of a CIA cover-up and for allegations regarding possible CIA manipulation of evidence. There is now good reason to question the evidentiary integrity of the Z film. Moreover, it is clear that before the FBI had obtained the film, CIA experts had already analyzed it and had found data which strongly suggested a conspiracy." ("Hidden Exposure: Cover-Up and Intrigue in the CIA's Secret Possession of the Zapruder Film", by Philip Melanson, The Third Decade, November, 1984) Officially, on the day of the assassination, Zapruder took the film to a photo studio in Dallas and had an original and three copies of the film made. He sold the original and one copy to Life the next day, and gave the other two copies to the Secret Service on the day of the assassination. They gave one to the FBI the following day. The Secret Service during that period, as Prof. Melanson points out, had some dependence on the CIA for technical services, and lacked sophisticated photo interpretation facilities of its own. Document 450 indicates that the Secret Service turned over a copy of the film to the CIA's NPIC, but not say when they did it. It is not only not clear when they asked NPIC to analyze it, but whether or not this is the way it happened--that the SS had it first and gave a copy to NPIC. The question is, also, whether or not the original and three copies processed and printed by NPIC were the three that Zapruder accounted or were new and in addition to the one's he had allegedly made. In other words, was the original film really developed in Dallas, or immediately flown to Washington and developed at NPIC, where it could be analyzed on the spot? Of course, if the evidence was faked in JFK's murder, it would appear that here was a good opportunity to do it the night of the assassination. The conspirators, obviously operating at a high level of government, had to take a look at the film in order to know what information it revealed about the true nature of the murder. Or, it could simply represent a need to investigate. But Melanson reports that a notation in the nine pages of item 450 that says that it took 2 hours to process and dry the film, one hour to make a print test, one hour to make 3 prints, and one and one half hours to process and dry prints, "referred to work being done with the original film, not a copy. My discussions with a half dozen photo laboratories, confirm this point, Processing refers to developing an original. If NPIC had been working with a copy, the first step would have been to print, then process. The NPIC notation 'print test' refers to a short piece of film printed from the original and used to check the exposure--to see if the negative is too light or too dark-- before printing copies from the original. Thus there is a strong 9

16 indication that NPIC had the original." (Melanson, p. 15) In 1982, Bernard Fensterwald received more documents relating to the Zapruder film and NPIC, through a law suit under the Freedom of Information Act. These documents had been withheld from Paul Hoch in his earlier requests which resulted in the nine pages he received in They concerned "the CIA's response to a Rockefeller Commission query about the NPIC analysis." (Melanson, p. 17) Among other things, the newer documents revealed that they brought a copy of the film to John McCone, the CIA's director, "late in 1963." We have to ask how come they don't wive us a date for this, though it is localized from the day of the assassination to the end of the year five weeks later. And, NPIC conducted their analysis, "late that same night." The document further states that Secret Service agents were there and took the film with them that night. Why would they come at night to do this work? Does the NPIC ordinarily do shift work and have employees there at night? This sounds suspiciously like the night of the assassination. Have you ever heard of a government agency not dating something? Melanson asks what happened to the other three copies of the film made by NPIC. We can only imagine that those were the three claimed to have been made by Zapruder, who, presumably did not know that all of this was going on, that his film was even out of Dallas, if it was that night. Among documents sent over to the National Archives from the Secret Service in 1979 was a letter from Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels of the Dallas office explaining to Director James Rowley how they came to have copies of the film. He said that after the film was developed, he was given two copies and airmailed one copy to the chief in Washington. (P. 19) As Melanson suggests, the film was probably flown that night to Washington, and we would assume that thf Secret Service would be so interested to see what it showed that they would have taken it over to the CIA's NPIC that night and analyzed it. And, wouldn't they want to see the original rather than a less clear copy? Melanson concludes his article in The Third Decade with these remarks: "If, as appears to be the case, it was the original of the Z film that was secretly diverted to the CIA laboratory on November 22, 1963, then the means and the opportunity for sophisticated alteration did, in fact, exist-- alteration that even the most expert analysis would have difficulty in detecting. By the 1960s cinematography labs had the technical capacity to insert or delete individual frames of a film, to resize images, to create special effects. But it would take an extraordinary sophistication to do so in a manner that would defy detection--the kind of sophistication that one 10

17 would expect of CIA photo experts. "Between Zapruder and the Secret Service, they had possession of all three of the Dallas-made copies for nearly twenty-four hours. With the original at NPIC and with three copies made there, it is possible that if the film was doctored, the three NPIC copies of the doctored film were substituted for the three Dallas-made copies." Or that all the copies went to NPIC " and the switch was made there... "It is possible that the film of the century is more intimately related to the crime of the century than we ever knew--not because it recorded the crime of the century, as we have assumed, but because it was itself an instrument of conspiracy." Does forgery invalidate the entire film? It would seem so, but not necessarily. Most or all of the evidence in this case appears to be tainted, but there are ways of weighing evidence so as to determine what part of it may still stand. If part of a piece of evidence is sufficiently corroborated, it may have value. I'm not sure what we need the Zapruder film for, nor am I sure what it proves. It may in fact prove nothing. The CIA evidently needed the film for training, (Melanson p. 17; CIA Memos of Oct 28 and April 23, 1975, Docs BJ and ), unless "training" is a euphemism for something else. We would hope that when they train their assassins, or otherwise subject them to desensitization, that that isn't what "training" means. The main thing that the Zapruder film seems to show is that the President was rocketed backwards, evidently from a powerful shot from in front of him. But that was attacked on the grounds that there was a jet effect which drew him backwards in the direction of a shot that came from behind. I personally think that is ridiculous, but I can't prove that it isn't so. ROBERT GRODEN Robert Groden has made many claims in the past with regard to the evidence in the JFK case. He is the person who popularized the Zapruder film showing the President's murder, which was owned by Life magazine. He has shown it at countless lectures, and it was first seen on the Geraldo Rivera show before the House Select Committee on Assassinations was created. This made him a hero in the eyes of many, and he appeared to educate the public in the evidence of conspiracy developed by others, but backed up with what appears to be a shot from in front of the President in the film. But he had previously claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald was actually standing in the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository during the assassination, according to his 11

18 examination of the Altgens photograph, when it turned out to be Mr. Billy Lovelady. He also claimed that one of the three lead motorcycle police officers in the right lane in front of the fatal motorcade actually leaves his formation and continues going straight on Houston Street, failing to make the last turn onto Elm, because we don't see him in the Zapruder film. Robert knows that the other films show the motorcycle officer where he is supposed to be. The policeman would have had to run his motorcycle through a big crowd of people standing all across Houston Street where Elm crosses it and where the motorcade is turning. The Weaver photograph shows the motorcycle turning, which we can see in Josiah Thompson's Six Seconds in Dallas (p. 248, and p. 312 in the paperback edition). The Mel McIntire photograph shows all three motorcycles officers, Grey, Brewer, and Freeman, about to turn onto the Stemmons Freeway ramp after the shots, as Martin Shackelford points out. The Bell film clearly shows the three motorcycles beyond the triple overpass as the limousine speeds up. Groden showed the Zapruder Film to the son of Congressman Thomas Downing of Virginia, who told his father about it, and Downing, who believed the Russians killed Kennedy, let it be known that the film had persuaded him that there was a conspiracy in the case. He was rated one hundred percent by a right wing think tank, the American Security Council in Boston, Virginia. Downing promptly got a resolution before the House to set up an investigation of the assassination, shouldering out of the way the major resolution of Congressman Henry Gonzalez which also dealt with the murder of Robert Kennedy and the attempted murder of Governor George Wallace. The story is told in High Treason. On December 10, 1975, Downing was quoted in the papers as saying that a "foreign conspiracy supporte4 by a domestic cover-up" killed the President. He promptly hired enough saboteurs and incompetents to guarantee that the investigation would never go anywhere. David Lifton states that Robert Groden was employed in 1971 by Moe Weisman, whose photo lab processed and then stored the Life Magazine copy of the Zapruder film. Lifton stated that Groden was doing some work in Weisman's film vault in 1971 when he stumbled upon the copy of the Zapruder film Lifton further asserted that Groden copied the film and then began to do enhancement work on it, and "show it around." Groden went on the road with Dick Gregory, showing the film and beating the conspiracy drums. Mark Crouch reports that Lifton stated that it wasn't until Groden was about to appear on the Geraldo Rivera program in 1975 that he informed Moe of his work. Groden claims that Moe Weisman knew of his possession and 12

19 work on the film "from the start." In 1988 NOVA producer Robert Reichter obtained the same dub of the film from Weisman. In 1990, Lifton, in vague terms, told Mark Crouch of a secret project he was in the midst of. Lifton stated that he had been "loaned" an early generation of the Zapruder film and was doing high tech enhancements which would show the film was altered. Mark Crouch wrote me that "during late 1990 and early 1991, Lifton provided additional information on his "Z Project." He stated his "main objective" was to bust up Groden's monopoly on the Z film. Lifton further stated that to finance this project he'd taken contributions from a select group of friends and "Fans" and that each was going to be given copies of the film and that Lifton wanted them to be 'distributed freely to libraries.' Lifton also stated that he can show the film was altered because in one frame immediately after the fatal headshot there are specs of blood on Jackie's face and in a later frame they are gone. It should be noted that Lifton MUST prove that the Zapruder film is altered because the large wound on the side/front of the head is not reported by the Dallas doctors...according to Lifton. "In the fall of 1990, Groden told me that he had asked Moe for use of the film and was told Reichter had never returned it and had subsequently loaned it to Lifton." "Lifton charged in a May 1991 letter to Oliver Stone (the movie director) that Groden stole the Zapruder film as well as the autopsy photos. Robert is aware of that letter and has told me it will be the cornerstone of his lawsuits against Lifton." 13